{"id":6887,"date":"2026-02-07T14:25:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T20:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6887"},"modified":"2026-02-08T08:53:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T14:53:27","slug":"updike-twain-poetry-for-iwu-professor-james-plath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2026\/02\/07\/updike-twain-poetry-for-iwu-professor-james-plath\/","title":{"rendered":"Updike + Twain = Poetry for IWU professor James Plath"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2026\/02\/07\/updike-twain-poetry-for-iwu-professor-james-plath\/screenshot-2026-02-07-at-2-20-36-pm\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6888\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-6888\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-07-at-2.20.36-PM-150x150.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>James Plath is best known to fellow Updike enthusiasts as president of The John Updike Society and an Updike scholar who edited two books of Updike interviews. But he&#8217;s also a creative writer, and after spending two weeks at Quarry Farm, the place where Mark Twain summered with his family for 20+ years, in addition to doing proposed research to write a comparative essay on how Twain modeled being both a celebrity and a writer for Updike, Plath felt compelled to write poems as well. The result: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/At-Quarry-Farm-James-Plath\/dp\/1639807543\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2N04RW4IJ7BO6&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.JeoBeOdc41OP_NbVOh576gUEP_mJEgNEIY1gJzE1G_WEai-S8V91h2Q64Fwaeg7-Z4fLYyvwUXg0vKgn5gfl-PvIquUXRxFuklmhVjoW5p4.qiesz69A2nyxu_k7UUfxyAbs9z_D6JXXHSOmahRGUMQ&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=at+quarry+farm&amp;qid=1770495778&amp;sprefix=at+quarry+farm%2Caps%2C154&amp;sr=8-1\"><em>At Quarry Farm<\/em><\/a>, a full-length collection published by Kelsay Books in 2025. He gave a reading on the campus of Illinois Wesleyan University, where he has taught American literature, journalism, creative writing, and film since 1988. The school&#8217;s student-run newspaper, <em>The Argus<\/em>, covered the event. Updike is mentioned in one of the poems.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iwuargus.com\/professor-james-plath-shares-passages-from-his-newest-novel\/\">Read the story<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Plath is best known to fellow Updike enthusiasts as president of The John Updike Society and an Updike scholar who edited two books of Updike interviews. But he&#8217;s also a creative writer, and after spending two weeks at Quarry &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2026\/02\/07\/updike-twain-poetry-for-iwu-professor-james-plath\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10,93,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-publications","category-readings-talks","category-society-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6887"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6892,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6887\/revisions\/6892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}